Pissed Jeans Boring Girls

Girls to the Front is the epic, definitive history of Riot Grrrl—the radical feminist uprising that exploded into the public eye in the 1990s and included incendiary punk bands Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, and Huggy Bear. A dynamic chronicle not just a movement but an era, this is the story of a group of pissed-off girls with no patience for sexism and no intention of keeping quiet.

Love found and lost, and found again and the promiscuity of European youth in the 1970's is the premise behind Blue Jeans. Director Hugues Burin des Roziers' first feature length film tells the story of Julien Morin, an 11-year-old boy from an affluent area of Paris who takes a summer-long trip with his class to England to learn English. Along with his friends Talimard, Picolet and Dupont, the class seems more interested in meeting girls and having fun than learning English. Julien's attentions soon turn away from his English classes and to Janet, a local girl he meets in an arcade. When she spurns him for Jean-Pierre, an older French boy, Julien too finds a physical attraction to this handsome boy. Labeled as a queer and laughed at, Julien is at first unaffected by these hurtful remarks and yearns to spend more time with his new friend. Jean-Pierre, however, is unaware of Julien's true feelings.

The United States’ myriad inequalities, hatreds and phobias are painfully evident in 2017, offering proof that the age-old dichotomy of “political bands” versus “apolitical bands” simply doesn’t exist. Either you are comfortable and unfazed by the current reigning power structures, or you use your music as a vehicle for the dismantling of oppression and the creation of something better. No matter what your songs are about, you are choosing a side. The position of Providence, RI’s Downtown Boys has been clear since they started storming through basements and DIY spaces with their radically-minded rock music: they are here to topple the white-cis-het hegemony and draft a new history.